Sound Carries
by Noritsu
Summary: Master Fung & Master Guan spring an unannounced test on our favorite wind dragon. Kind of an offbeat fic. Hope you'll give it a shot. Oneshot.


**Xiaolin Showdown**

**Sound Carries**

Authoress: Noritsu

Disclaimer

I **do not** own the Xiaolin Showdown characters, or the Xiaolin Showdown universe. They are copyrighted and belong to Christie Hui and Warner Brothers.

The storyline, however, is mine. So no pilfering, please. Thanks.

**TUN** Publishing Company

July, 2007

**T**he**U**sual**N**onsense

**Sound Carries**

The village sat at the base of a great sheer cliff.

Among the hard gravel and dirt pathways that passed for roads, children played here and there, their voices overlapping one another in a jumbled noisy mess, their bouncy-balls slapping against the outside wall of the house, or thudding against the road. Adults talked with one another, engaged in conversation in a much lower decibel. Screen doors, and interior doors opened and slammed shut. Running water from the outdoor pump filled buckets which were then carried away to a garden to be poured onto growing plants. Shovels scraped against earth, and rake tines scraped through the earth.

The tinny clink of metal could be detected, ever so slightly, whenever someone plunked down a few coins at the market house to pay for something they had purchased.

Occasionally, the dull sound of cart wheels were heard mingling with the sounds the cart's contents made every time the wheels hit a pothole, or other deformity, and lifted said contents aloft and back down onto the hard wooden bed.

The sounds of the village rose into the air, bumping into each other as they ascended. They crossed and re-crossed paths, bouncing off of each other, and meshing with each other, as they made their way skyward, both echoing and fading off the great stone cliff face.

Little did the villagers realize that the normal hustle and bustle of their daily lives was being used as a training exercise for a certain student at a temple in the mountains above them who just happened to specialize in the element of wind.

Wind, of course, is created by agitated air molecules. Get them moving at a fast enough rate of speed, and you've got a nice breeze on your hands. Conspire to aggravate them further, and you might find yourself with a good stiff wind. If you're really in a daring mood, you could whip up a tropical style gust. And if you're in an exceptionally bad mood, maybe a tornado would better reflect just how you're feeling.

Yes, there are many different ways that a wind element might go about playing with the air surrounding him.

But for a wind element, the air doesn't _only _hold the possibility of whipping up a destructive downburst and leveling your village to roughly the thickness of a waffle.

There's also a little thing called sound waves. Sound waves just love to ride the air, hauling along all the nifty bits of noise they've picked up. Noise in the form of children laughing, adults talking importantly, dogs barking, or footfalls on the ground.

Footfalls on the ground?

Raimundo Pedrosa tilted his head slightly and shifted his stance a bit. He abruptly dropped his scrutiny of the ascending village noises and brought his wind sense to bear behind him. For the last two weeks his master had been bringing him here to the top of this cliff face to listen to the sounds below. The exercise involved trying to pick apart all the different sounds he heard and identifying them. This moved on to picking apart the different sounds, identifying them, and pinpointing their starting place.

One hour, every day, for the last fourteen days.

There were five different dogs in the village below. Just by the pitch and tone of their bark, or whine, Rai could tell each one of them apart, _and_ he could also tell you in which part of the village each particular dog was at the moment. He was getting better with the children's voices, too.

He racked his brain, trying to think if Master Fung had mentioned that he wanted him to go so far as to tackle identifying whose footfalls went with who as they walked along. Wouldn't that be getting a little obsessive?

There it was again – the footfall. So he hadn't been mistaken.

He opened his eyes and looked to his Master on his left. Master Fung was staring, seemingly unperturbed, down at the village. If he heard the minute sound of disturbed sod beneath a foot he wasn't making it known.

Rai closed his eyes again, and stretched out with his wind sense. Utilizing it in a different manner this time, he formed an image, in his mind's eye, of the displacement of air molecules surrounding a human figure that was sneaking up on them from behind. This human was too tall to be any of his teammates. The human was tall, solidly built, and had no hair.

Interesting.

A slight smile curled the corner of Rai's mouth and he waited. Ever so slowly, one footfall was heard, and then several moments later, another.

Master Fung hadn't bothered to tell him that there would be a surprise pop quiz but, no matter. The man could creep up on him as slowly as he wanted, it wouldn't change the outcome of his fate.

Closer he came, ever closer.

Rai had totally abandoned his study of the sounds below, and had isolated the footfalls of the man behind him. He didn't even hear the noise of the village anymore.

An upward disturbance of air molecules created a faint whooshing sound as the man lifted his spear to strike. Apparently, he decided that this would now be the perfect time to let loose an accompanying battle cry.

"Eyah!"

The cry hadn't finished coming out of his opponent's mouth when Raimundo spun around on one foot, ducking as he did so, to avoid the spear coming down on his head. He lunged forward, with a battle cry of his own, to strike out with the heel of his hand. It connected upward with the breastbone of the taller man, slamming him backward with such force that his hand involuntarily opened and divested itself of the spear it had held. The man became airborne and sailed backwards to land about ten yards away from where he had been standing. The spear clattered uselessly to the ground mere inches from Rai's feet.

Rai stood perfectly still and allowed himself a moment to digest what had just happened. He stared at the man lying on the ground trying to recapture his breath. He didn't seem hurt, just temporarily stunned.

Rai then turned to look at his master. Master Fung was regarding him with a raised eyebrow, and a quizzical expression.

Rai shrugged. "So? I need to work more on controlling how hard I throw someone when it's not an actual enemy." He paused. The expression on Master Fung's face didn't change. Rai pursed his lips. "You could have at least warned me that there'd be a pop quiz somewhere down the line."

This statement elicited a smile from the master. "Then it would not have been an accurate test, would it?"

Rai thought about that for a moment. "So, then, did I pass?"

The smile deepened. "Why don't you go ask Master Guan?"

Rai swallowed, and picked up the spear of his other, sometimes master, who was now struggling to sit up in some sort of dignified position. He pushed himself up with one hand while the other rubbed across his sore chest.

Rai walked over to Master Guan and stood contritely holding the spear in front of him. "Here's your spear back. Sorry."

Master Guan looked up at him. "Yes. Of course you are."

Rai frowned. "I am!" He sniffled for effect.

Master Guan studied his face for a long moment, and sighed. He extended his hand. "Just help me up."

Rai grabbed onto his master's hand and pulled him up. Master Guan gave him one of his best smiles. "You are going to rub the soreness from my back when we get back to the temple."

Rai cast his eyes downward, and shuffled his feet slightly. "Yes, sir."

"And you!" he said, talking to Master Fung. "Remind me to never allow you to talk me into doing something like this again!"

Master Fung walked forward to join his colleague. "You _could_ have said no."

Rai walked just a few paces behind his masters as they left the cliff's edge. "So," he pressed again, "did I pass?"

Master Guan's reply was a grumpy 'hmph' followed by, "My answer will be directly proportional to how my back is feeling by lunchtime."

The two masters talked quietly between them during the trek back to the designated pick-up area with Dojo.

Behind them, Rai followed at a respectable distance, biting his lip and trying not to laugh.

finis

* * *

Thanks to everyone who took the time to read 'Discordant Melody'. And thanks to the one reader who was daring enough to leave a review!

Also, thanks to everyone who read and reviewed 'Late In The Evening'. I really appreciate the reviews!

I'm hoping to get at least two reviews for this one. Hey, I can always hope, can't I?

TTFN, Nori  
_this is no pie!_


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